Brookwood’s chess team wins state championship

ATLANTA — When it comes to chess, Brookwood Elementary’s team can certainly say “checkmate.”

On March 23, Brookwood Elementary's chess team won the 2014 Georgia Team Championship in the K-3 category.

The state championship, held at the Marriott Atlanta Perimeter Center, was open to public, private and home-schooled teams that qualified through the K-3 state qualifier or through competitions in other areas of the state.

Another Forsyth County Schools that placed in the K-3 category was Shiloh Point Elementary (11th place).

More than 450 students participated in the tournament, representing 61 schools from all over metro-Atlanta.

Brookwood's K-3 chess team qualified for the championship by tieing for first place with 22 points and was given the second place trophy on a points based tie-breaker Feb. 8.

In the state championship, there was no stopping Brookwood's K-3 team, which is made up of Aneesh Seemakurty (third grade), Sanjay Jagadeesh (Kindergarten), Akshur Raghuram (third grade), Steven Hao (third grade) and Ethan Kong (second grade).

Under Coach Ben Vineyard, the students won all five rounds and after a perfect score of five, they were declared Georgia Team State Champions 2014 in the K-3 category.